THE EEG EXAMINATION, TOGETHER WITH P300 POTENTIAL AS A METHOD FOR CAUSATIVE DIFFERENTIATION IN PATIENTS WITH A GENETIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONING TO ALCOHOL ADDICTION

Abstract

The electrophysiological characteristics of alcoholics, such as the P300 amplitude of the Event-Related Potential (ERP), are related to high risk in their offspring, and are considered to be biological endophenotypes of a predisposition to develop alcohol use disorders. Contemporary knowledge justifies early diagnoses of the alcohol risk degree among adolescents, or even children, including their families, involving an examination of the P300 potential as an endophenotype, prior to achievement of an age of alcohol initiation. The results of such research approaches may be of importance not only cognitively, but also of prophylactically, in the early recognition of increased susceptibility to alcohol. The simplicity and non-invasiveness, and the exceptionally low costs of the methods described, should obtain for the present as well as in the future, a wider examination, one potentially even mass scope of in character and usefulness. The knowledge of such an endophenotype and genetically-related susceptibility, in the individual, family, and social dimension and transmission, and in the rearing of children and adolescents, could protect – not just individuals – but many from entering into the route of addiction, which is most frequently the effect of acting unaware and with negative life consequences, both generational and transgenerational for generations to come.